Plot: What’s it about?
Pinhead is back in the 3rd and final theatrical entry in the Hellraiser series. Yes, there have been countless more Hellraiser movies produced since then, but none have made it to an actual theatrical release. After showing a personal hell and the depths of hell itself, there is only one place left for Pinhead to wreak havoc, earth. Pinhead has apparently been frozen into a large column-like statue of which he cannot escape until he/it has consumed enough human blood. The elusive puzzle box has also been frozen into the statue with him. The puzzle box is the only thing that can send Pinhead back to hell and he is on a mission do destroy it, well his first mission is to escape his cement coffin. After a cocky club owner purchases the statue he begins to realize it is much more than just a statue. After a night of steamy sex one of his mistresses gets a little too close to the statue and ends up getting sucked in. Apparently this allows for Pinhead to have enough energy to speak from the statue, but not actually escape it, he needs one more sacrifice. On the other side of the story we have a reporter who witnesses a man being brought into the hospital after being ripped apart by chains. She is determined to break the story and seeks out the club that it took place in. Of course she runs into the club owner and his girlfriend who tells the reporter about all of the strange happenings since the statue has come into their lives. Without giving too much away, that is the basic premise. It’s not quite as good as the first 2 Hellraiser movies, which to me were extremely good, especially the first one, but this isn’t as bad as say the 4 or 5 straight-to-dvd releases we’ve had lately. I’m surprised it took this long to release the third movie, but at least its here.
Video: How does it look?
The video looks like a horror movie from the early 90’s should. The colors are pretty bland to add to the feel of the movie, where as the blood is very bright and vibrant. The blacks are all pretty dark but do suffer from a little bit of noise during some parts of the film. The film itself is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and overall looks good for an early 90’s film.
Audio: How does it sound?
I’m a little disappointed in the audio quality of this one. A decent horror movie out of a respectable franchise is definitely worthy of a 5.1 Dolby digital track, but instead we are only given a 2.0 stereo mix. I think the addition of a 5.1 track would have made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. There are definitely parts that would have been really cool with better sound, like just about every scene involving chains. The soundtrack was also way too loud for the dialogue, everything go overpowered and I was forced to crank the volume, which didn’t help all the time because, obviously when you do that the soundtrack gets louder too. Overall I would have loved to see a 5.1 mix added to this DVD, but I guess we’re stuck with the lackluster 2.0 stereo mix.
Supplements: What are the extras?
The disc contains the theatrical trailer along with a 30 minute documentary about Clive Barker. The documentary was produced at the same time as the movie was, which again leads me to the question, why did they wait so long to release this on dvd? Obviously they didn’t just now find a stash of deleted scenes they could throw on DVD. Enough ranting, back to the documentary, it is basically Clive Barker explainig where is inspirations come from and how it feels to be a horror writer. If your a fan of Barker and his work its definitely worth taking a half hour to check out.
